


When The Lights Go Down

by CaitlynRose



Category: A Star is Born (2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Domestic Bliss, Everybody Lives, F/M, Fluff, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-18
Updated: 2019-02-18
Packaged: 2019-10-30 16:10:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17831834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaitlynRose/pseuds/CaitlynRose
Summary: Ally and Jack, on stage and off. Fluff.





	When The Lights Go Down

It took some time for Ally to get to the point at which she felt completely comfortable performing alone on a big stage; plenty of anxious afternoons spent rehearsing between-song banter in her mind, hours lying awake wondering what she could have done better, trying to fight the urge to look up the night’s performance on YouTube. Just, in general, no small amount of feeling the fear and doing it anyway.

So, she’s proud of the fact that she’s finally there. She knows she can do it now - just herself and her piano and the songs that come from her soul. She _loves_ doing it.

But still there is nothing - absolutely nothing on this earth - like performing with Jackson. That’s just the truth and Ally doesn’t think it makes her any less of a Strong Independent Woman to admit it. Or, if it does, she doesn’t care.

She might not exactly _need_ him up there with her these days, but she wants him every bit as much as she ever did.

At this point, finding the harmony with his voice feels as natural to her as breathing; even the lyrics he wrote long before he met her she’s come to know like her own name. And Jack too has found his way into most every song in her arsenal, making a space for himself - in his typical understated way - that now feels like such a chasm somehow when he’s not there. Sometimes, she’d swear that his fingers on the guitar strings seem to have figured out her every vocal riff and trill before she has herself.

People - journalists mostly - have asked her time and again to try and explain where the magic comes from, and Ally never thinks she does an especially good job of it. The best she can come up with is that they just know each other - like, _really_ know each other - and they trust each other. Those might not sound like the most rock ’n’ roll things ever but Ally would defy anyone to stand at a microphone in front of 20,000 people and not see their crucial importance pretty fucking quickly.

The other thing is that, as an added side benefit, she and Jackson Maine happen to find one another damn entertaining.

He used to say, back when he was drinking, that she brought out the best in him on stage; that he’d be a little more sensible before show time if he knew she was coming on, that he’d play a little bit more fiercely, put a little bit more of his heart into it, when she was alongside him or watching from side of stage.

Ally doesn’t know if he realizes that she feels - has always felt - exactly the same way. She wants to _impress_ him up there.

She and Jack perform with each other, sure, but in some sense, she thinks, they have always performed _for_ each other too. In every show, there are moments when the two of them will throw their heads back and laugh in pure joy, when they’ll try to surprise one other, maybe even one up each other a little bit. There are moments that, even in front of huge crowds, feel as intimate as that grocery store parking lot the night they first met.

Tonight, they finish with _Shallow_ , as they often do. Walking off stage, Jackson slings his arm around her neck and she reaches up to grab his hand with both of hers. The lights are blinding and it feels like the ground is vibrating beneath them, and at once, Ally can hear two things - the roar of the crowd, and her husband’s voice right in her ear.

“Pretty fucking good,” he says with a grin.

He says it every time after they sing this song, and every time she feels like she could just about burst with happiness.

\- - - - - - - - - - 

After the show, there are people to meet, hands to shake, photos to pose for.

They’ve tried to put in place a system in which all of this is done pre rather than post performance, but somehow it never seems to exactly work out that way. Record label execs, radio DJs, relatives of anyone even tangentially connected to the show or the venue… all manner of people seem to materialize at 10pm with whom it would seem either smart or kind or both to spend some time, and it’s rare that the whole process takes less than an hour.

It’s not that Ally minds doing it, per se. It’s just that given the choice, she’d rather have done it at 6pm.

It’s just that by 10pm, after what basically amounts to two hours of foreplay, she typically is in the mood for the company of one person only.

Her gaze drifts to Jack across the room now. Two guys she doesn’t know are talking animatedly, competing for his attention, and he’s just listening, low key as ever. On stage, he knows how to stand in a spotlight, knows how to put on a show - he can absorb all the energy that’s coming at him without one iota of fear or hesitation and do something spectacular with it. Off the stage, though, he’s never really been the guy to make a performance out of his every move, and Ally for one is damn glad of it.

Over in her corner, there are of course currently people all around her too - nice people, people she wants to talk to - and she tries to return her attention to the conversation that’s going on. Some part of her focus stays with Jack, though. It’s always like this after a show - invariably they get pulled apart, but something about the thing that’s just happened on stage lingers between them, somehow, leaves them each hyper aware of one another’s proximity.

His beard is mostly grown back now, Ally finds herself thinking idly, as she watches him cast an unconscious hand across it.

A few weeks ago, they’d been at home on the couch, and she can’t even remember how the whole thing had come about, only that at some point or other she’d reached over to trail her fingernails across his beard in the way she often did. “I’d like to see your chin someday,” she’d said lightly, and that was about all it took for him to hand her the razor. He’d sat patiently on the edge of the tub as she tried to keep her movements smooth and even, giggling all the while.

It turned out that totally clean shaven, he just looked weird - they’d both agreed.

To make matters worse, Caroline had taken one look at him and burst out crying. The tears _were_ at least short lived - her little arms stretching up towards him as soon as she'd realized he was still her daddy - and thank God, because Ally hadn’t seen such heartbreak writ large on Jackson’s face in a long time. She’d almost cried herself in that moment, unable to believe she’d apparently brought such unhappiness into her household with a throwaway comment.

The stubble that came soon afterwards Ally actually thought looked sexy as hell, and she told Jack so - but it was scratchy and she’d told him that too. 

This week, he’s started to get back to normal - not as much of a beard as he’d had when she first met him, perhaps, but about as much as he’s had for this past year or so. Enough to be soft against her face and her fingertips. Against her breasts and her thighs. 

Ally shakes her head a little bit, trying to banish the thoughts that don’t seem quite right to indulge in while she’s in a green room full of people. Still, there’s a sort of clench low in her stomach that she has no control over.

Funnily enough, Ramón had actually sent her a Buzzfeed article just a few days ago entitled “ _Jackson Maine’s Facial Hair: The Definitive Ranking_.” (Ramón, as a general rule, is always good for a Buzzfeed article - Ally would estimate than 60% of their text conversations consist of said articles from him, and responding emojis from her).

She’d pretty much agreed with the article’s conclusions, as it happened, and had had to commend the detail in which the topic seemed to have been considered. But, she thinks now, with a faint smirk, there were some clearly some gaps in the research too - some criteria that this unknown author hadn’t quite factored into her assessment of Jack’s beard or lack thereof. “Makes his kid bawl her brains out,” being one example. “Feels perfect between his wife's thighs” being another.

\- - - - - - - - - - 

 What Ally has learned is that she and Jackson can’t just wait until there are no more people left, and then leave themselves.

That might seem like the polite way to go about things, but it doesn’t work. It doesn’t work because while they are in the room, _there will always be other people in it_. In effect, they _are_ the party - and thus it also falls to them to call time on the party.

Jack catches her in a quiet moment and sidles up behind her, his hand on her waist.

He leans in close. “You ready to get out of here?” he asks quietly, and she can feel his breath on the shell of her ear.

Her reply comes in less than a second.

“ _Yes_ ,” she says emphatically.

They don’t say goodbyes. (That’s another thing Ally now knows is a fool’s errand, and one that will take another forty minutes, minimum). They just slip away.

And as soon as they’re out in the hallway, Jack sets a pace, pulling her along by the hand. Where exactly they’re headed, she doesn’t know, and she doesn’t get the impression that he does either. She breaks out into peels of laughter, almost tripping over her own feet, happy to be going wherever he wants to take her.

They turn a corner and when it’s just another long, sparse corridor, Jack seems to lose the will to find anywhere more private - or, for that matter, atmospheric. He stops short and turns on his heel, both hands reaching for her upper arms. Before she knows it, Ally finds herself pressed up against a wall, and then he’s kissing her, hard. She isn’t inclined to stop him.

By the time they pull apart, she’s a little breathless, her chest heaving.

“It was good tonight,” he says, his voice low, and she nods, feeling slightly dazed.

“It was fuckin’ awesome.”

Jack smiles at that. His hands are are braced against the wall on either side of her head now, and not for the first time, Ally is reminded of how much bigger he is than her, how much physically stronger. Of course, such a realization isn’t always one that makes a woman feel protected - that she knows. In Jack, though, it hasn’t ever made her feel anything but.

She reaches up to grab his neck, pulling him towards her for another kiss.

“Let’s go home,” she murmurs.

\- - - - - - - - - -

 The thing about about Jackson being sober is that it means he can always drive.

He kept Phil around for a while after he got out of rehab, but as time went on it became more and more evident that the driver’s presence was simply unnecessary. Ally can remember more than a few occasions on which she personally asked Phil to drive her to or collect her from someplace, just to give the guy something to do.

Eventually, one day, Jackson paid the college tuition for both of Phil’s kids and then let him go. It had felt, somehow, like another little milestone. Another little bit of proof that Jackson wasn’t ever going back to the days of being too loaded to get himself home.

Tonight, the car ride back from The Forum is a quick 45 minutes, a good 20 of which they’ve spent talking about their daughter.

“Is it crazy that I kinda just want to go and pick her up?” Ally asks, squinting over at Jack from the passenger seat.

“I kinda do too,” he admits. “I think your dad would be pretty upset though. Matter of fact I think Carrie would be pretty upset. She told me yesterday that grandpa lets her have chocolate cereal when she stays there.”

Ally just laughs. Her hand has been curled around her husband's leg the entire time they’ve been driving, and she inches it a little higher now, then higher still.

“I mean obviously,” she says coyly, “there are some benefits to a child free house.”

She can feel his muscles twitching under her palm, can see him starting to strain against his jeans, but she says nothing, just gazes casually out the window.

“Fuck,” he hisses, a second later, when her hand tightens around his thigh.

She turns to look at him, all innocence. “What?”

\- - - - - - - - - -

They’re barely in the front door before they’re grasping at each other, pulling off clothes, making out like teenagers.

Except that actually, nothing like this was even remotely a feature of Ally’s adolescence. When Ally was a teenager, she wouldn't have believed that she'd ever be with somebody the way she is with Jack - that someone could look at her like he does and make her feel so weak and so powerful at the same time.

Her mouth is open against his cheek and she reaches down to touch him, flicking open the button on his jeans with ease, tugging down the zipper.

“Is this for me?” she asks, her voice barely more than a whisper.

His eyes roll back in his head a little, and he grunts at the feel of her hand.

“You know that it is.” 

Ally smiles, kissing over his jawbone and down his neck.

“I swear to God, Ally,” Jack adds then. “There isn’t a person on this earth...”

He seems to forget to finish his sentence but she somehow hears the ending anyway; she’s heard it - or a version of it - from his lips so many times.

She pulls back a little to look in his eyes.

“I love you," she says simply. It’s the truest thing she knows.

Jack kisses her, sliding both hands under her shirt and up over her ribcage, and just then - seemingly out of fucking _nowhere_ \- Charlie comes bounding towards them. He jumps up onto them, barking up a storm, clearly exited as can be to have some company after a whole evening home by himself.

Ally and Jack both dissolve into fits of laughter. They bend down to pat and play with their first baby a little bit, and try to very briefly convey to him that of course they're happy to see him too, but this is just really not the best time.

\- - - - - - - - - - 

Sprawled in their big bed, Ally feels boneless and satisfied.

As an added bonus, there's the dim awareness that tomorrow will be the very rare morning that doesn't begin at 5:30am with a 3-year-old treating both her and Jack's bodies like one big jungle gym. Undeniably, the decision to enlist her father's babysitting services is feeling like a pretty spectacular one right about now.

She feels Jack's hands on her hip, feels him moving down the bed, and she laughs drowsily, feeling almost drunk. She doesn't tend to have too many boozy nights any more, but she remembers this buzzy, contented sensation, this heaviness in her limbs, as being something similar to the effects of a bottle and a half of red wine, only better.

"Jackson," she mumbles affectionately, a hand reaching out blindly for him, her fingers weaving through his hair. "Oh my god. I...I can't again."

Even as she says it, though, her legs are falling open for him, as if of their own accord.

"You can," he coaxes, as he kisses his way over her knees, and it's true that history would suggest he's correct on this one. "I'll be gentle. Please? I just want to taste you."

Ally closes her eyes, exhaling a little. She honestly feels likes she could come just from him saying that, and it takes less than fifteen seconds of his tongue on her to have her crying out, tears leaking from her eyes, her thighs clamped around his head in the way that she always says can't possibly be comfortable and he says feels like heaven on earth.

Evidently, she _could_ , again. He was right. And in this particular instance, Ally finds she doesn't mind being proven wrong.

She tugs Jack back up towards her, and lets herself be folded into his body, and they sleep.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I think this is about all I have left for Jack and Ally, as I pretty much am out of ideas! If you've read and enjoyed any of my stories, I'm glad :)


End file.
